Saturday, May 15, 2010

We're finally departing Germany after being stationed here for 3.5 years. And we definitely tried to make the most of it by taking trips to lots of other countries. But with all the great experiences we've had in Germany, it seems only fitting to collect all of those memories into an end-of-tour summary post.

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

We boarded a ferry in Tarifa, Spain and headed over to Tangier (also known as Tangiers), Morocco. Written out, I keep wanting to pronounce it as "tangy-er." The ferry ride over isn't that long, and most of the time is spent waiting in line on board the ferry to get the customs & immigration paperwork taken care of.

While standing in line, I realized that the car key had fallen out of my pocket. Fortunately, I figured out that it probably slipped out while I was sitting down...so I went back to my seat and there it was. I don't even want to think about how bad it would have been to have lost the key, only to realize it at the end of a long day with no means of getting back to the hotel or airport tomorrow.

The most stylized pedestrian symbol I've ever seen

Advertisement

Anyways, we arrived at the port of Tangiers shortly thereafter. We made our way through bustling crowds to meet up with our tour guide, who escorted us to the van. I should point out that we've got our baby with us, but the van didn't have a car seat. So, for the one day in her life where I really didn't have a choice, my daughter got to ride in my lap while we drove around town. Hopefully that wasn't illegal...but I didn't see anyone with car seats while we were driving.

Our guided walking tour through the Kasbah was pretty fun. It was featured in the Bourne series, and I actually recognized part of the entrance in the movie. We stopped at a restaurant and had a nice local meal in what is probably a tourist restaurant catering to foreigners on tour.

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Probably the most interesting thing about Gibraltar, other than the legendary big rock and all the Barbary Apes, was that we had to walk across the runway to get into town. We parked in Spain and walked across the border, which is just north of the airport...which is practically the same width as the country.

The only way into Gibraltar by land is across the runway.

Advertisement

We took a bus down to the southern tip where we could see Africa. It was rather windy out there on the exposed outcrop of rock.

Africa on the left, Europe on the right.

From there, we caught a bus back into town, had lunch at Smith's Fish & Chips, and then hiked up the rock...where we encountered several families of apes. Some of them even tried to get into the baby's stroller!